How about a riddle for a change?
What do you think the following items have in common:
- Lord Voldemort
Lord Voldemort is the main villain in the famous series of J.K. Rowling’s novels, Harry Potter - Bradley Tank
Standard lightly armored tank/IFV/APC of the United States. - Master Boot Record
A logical part of Hard Disk - Norton Ghost
A full-system backup/restore solution by Symantec corp.
Answer: Microsoft Word thinks they are all human names!
Microsoft Office 2003 or 2007 allows you to mark your documents with Smart Tags: Purple dotted underlines like hyperlinks which instead of opening a web page, pop up a menu with various options. Microsoft Word 2003 or 2007 can recognize certain types of data in your document and mark them with Smart Tag, including human names, addresses and measurement units.
Screenshot of Microsoft Word 2007 having detected irrelevant things as human names
Why don’t you see for yourself! Here is a sample Microsoft Word file.
Fun with Smart Tags.docx
Edit (2010-05-19): Note that this funny effect no longer works in Microsoft Office 2010 or Microsoft Office Web Apps.
Former application developer. Currently a network administrator and student of linguistics (part-time).
